A Short Tale of Support and Love: Whale Valley

The winner of the short film Special Mention at 66th Cannes Film Festival, Whale Valley depicts an impressively splendid brotherhood between Ívar and Arnar in an isolated Icelandic farm with stunningly captured landscape. The director Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson said in an interview that as heard on the news about Iceland’s dealing with a high suicide rate among its youth, he has also had friends that have taken their own lives, which urged him to tell a story of support and love where emotions are hidden beneath the surface because of the societal oppressions under the idea of manhood.

Harsh weather turns into an extraordinary painting in this film scene by scene, just like Friedrich’s Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, which works painfully beautiful, though here the nature is above the men as seen the boys’ struggling with the lack of motivation which can easily drag them into committing suicide.